A normal user's look into the world of 3D Stereo Technologies

Microsoft has been requiring digital signatures for device drivers for a while already, so if you’ve used EDID override INF monitor drivers already, you probably know about the option to Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 7. In Windows 8 however Microsoft has removed the F8 key during boot that you could’ve used to easily and quickly disable the Driver Signature Enforcement, the official reason for that is the optimizations made in order to improve the speed and performance of Windows 8. The good news is that the functionality to disable the Driver Signature Enforcement is still there in Windows 8, just the way to call it is a bit different.

If you are using the tile-based shell:

1. Hit the physical Windows button to see the new tile-based menu
2. Move the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen to call an extra menu
3. Select the Settings option (gear icon) and click on Change PC settings
4. Go to the General menu, scroll down the list of options to Advanced Startup and click on Restart Now
5. You’ll see another menu with options, click on Troubleshoot, then Advanced Options and then Startup Settings
6. You’ll see another Restart button that you need to click on in order to reboot Windows 8 with the extra startup options
7. Hit 7 or F7 when you see the Startup Settings menu in order to load up Windows 8 with Disable Driver Signature Enforcement directive active.

If you are using the old Windows 7 shell or just to make your life easier not having to go through the full procedure described above each time, you can create a simple BAT file with the following contents in it and place it on your Desktop (shutdown.bat for example):

shutdown /o /r /t 0

By running the BAT file you’ll be taken directly to step 5 of the above guide and you need to only follow the rest of the steps in order to get the Driver Signature Enforcement disabled and be able to install an unsigned EDID override INF monitor driver. After that you can just reboot normally and the Driver Signature Enforcement won’t be active anymore and you can continue to feel safe… ;)